I attended an event yesterday that was more than 30 years in the making. 

As I looked around the White House Office of Urban Affairs listening tour meeting at a packed Philadelphia warehouse space and saw low-income residents and local leaders mingling with some of our nation’s most powerful people (including two cabinet secretaries!), I thought back on where the fight for equitable access to healthy food started for me. 

It was 1979 and I was recently out of UC-Berkeley Law School and working for the public-interest law firm Public Advocates when a group of residents of a low-income, African-American neighborhood in San Francisco approached me to see if I could help stop their community’s one and only supermarket from leaving. In my hometown of St. Louis, I had seen first-hand the neglect and despair that festered after supermarkets left poor communities there.

No one had ever tried before to find a legal theory that would provide communities access to healthy food, so we were on uncharted legal ground.  Using interviews with more than 150 residents of local communities threatened by a lack of food access, we eventually filed an administrative petition with then-Gov. Jerry Brown seeking redress to the problem of the exodus of supermarkets from low-income communities.  The Governor was remarkably responsive: appointing a commission that held hearings throughout the state.  

Because of the determination of those residents, California began a slow move toward improving healthy food access for millions of our neighbors; the petition sparked farmers’ markets, cooperative buying clubs, a few cooperative markets-but, unfortunately, not one supermarket.

In the years since, equitable food access has been mostly relegated to a local issue, with fights cropping up sporadically in neighborhoods as local supermarkets threaten to leave. We had seen some successes - like San Diego’s Market Creek Plaza or the Pathmark in Harlem - but the victories had been hard to come by.

That is, until about five years ago, when Pennsylvania’s Gov. Ed Rendell and State Rep. Dwight Evans began to listen to the ideas and innovation of their constituents and the leadership of The Food Trust and The Reinvestment Fund. Out of that collaboration came the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a remarkable program that has helped open dozens of markets and seed more than 3,700 jobs in under-served communities.

Now, through the tireless efforts of residents and advocates, the White House Office of Urban Affairs has shown real interest in learning about this proven program, hopefully to take the ideas and solutions to the national scale. White House leaders want to lift up the program and hear how it is impacting real people. For the first time, I can see the fight for equitable food access is winnable.

I cannot stress enough how important and exciting it is to have a White House willing to listen to new and innovative ideas. This administration - in virtually every office and agency - seems to recognize that all Americans deserve to live in a community of opportunity.

But that does not mean progress will happen on its own. Far from it. The most important attribute the equity movement has going for it is our tenacity. Thirty years ago, when those residents came into my office to ask for help in improving their community, I knew it would be a long, hard fight. But sitting in Philadelphia this week, I felt emboldened to keep fighting, to keep pushing, because success is always within our grasp.

We must demand equity now.

Like many people working in the trenches to combat the scourge of “food deserts” in America, I was excited to hear the USDA was releasing a new study about the problem. With the overwhelming scientific evidence showing a lack of access to healthy food is a detriment to our health, the spotlight from the USDA was quite welcome.

While the USDA should be commended for looking at the food desert issue, it seemed to miss the boat on the depth, breadth, and consequences of the problem.

By the report’s own admission, 23.5 million Americans live in low-income communities without a grocery store within walking distance. That’s about one in every 13 people. That doesn’t seem to jibe with the study’s first finding that “access to a supermarket or large grocery store is a problem for a small percentage of households.”

But more odd is the study’s relative dismissal of the benefits of healthy eating and the real fallout from living in a community with little or no access to fresh food. There has been significant scientific research showing the vital role fresh food consumption and access play in our health:

• A 2002 study in the American Journal of Public Health found fruit and vegetable consumption among African Americans rose 32 percent with each additional local food store.
• A 2006 study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found lowest rates of obesity (21 percent) among people living in neighborhoods with supermarkets or grocery stores and the highest rates of obesity (32-40 percent) among people living in places with no supermarkets and access to only smaller grocery stores and convenience stores.
• A 2007 national study of more than 70,000 teens found that increased availability of chain supermarkets was associated with lower rates of being overweight
• A March 2009 study in Indianapolis showed adding a new grocery store to a neighborhood translated into a 3 pound weight decrease for residents.

This a public health issue, plain and simple. As we demonstrated in the 2008 report, Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes, people living in neighborhoods crowded with fast-food and convenience stores but relatively few grocery or produce outlets have a significantly higher prevalence of obesity and diabetes.

In Ezra Klein’s blog post for the Washington Post today, he says that food deserts aren’t the problem. “The problem, it seems, is the opposite: food swamps. Areas dense with fast food and convenience stores,” he writes.

But this is not an either-or proposition. Designed for Disease showed clearly that a dramatically unbalanced food environment is a direct health risk. Having no food choices at all is just as problematic as having a glut of bad food choices.

Photo used under a Creative Common License from Flickr user Spine (aka Rick)

The USDA released a much-anticipated study of food deserts today. The full study can be found here. Below are statements from PolicyLink and The Food Trust about the study.

Statement from PolicyLink President Judith Bell

“The new USDA food desert report provides yet another confirmation that access to healthy food is a significant problem for millions of Americans. The report shows that about one in every 13 Americans – 23.5 million people — live in low-income communities that are more than a mile from the nearest large grocery store.

As more than 70 studies have shown during the past decade, the lack of access to healthy food is a real challenge in many low-income urban communities, rural communities, and communities of color. This is a public health issue, plain and simple. As we demonstrated in the 2008 report, Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes, people living in neighborhoods crowded with fast-food and convenience stores but relatively few grocery or produce outlets have a significantly higher prevalence of obesity and diabetes. (The report was prepared by PolicyLink in partnership with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy).  Other studies demonstrate that in addition to providing access to healthy foods, supermarkets and large grocery stores are important neighborhood economic engines, bringing jobs and revitalization.

This USDA report adds to the growing body of research on the ways that where you live affects your health. Now is the time to implement proven, impactful policies to address America’s food desert crisis.”

Statement from John Weidman, Deputy Executive Director, The Food Trust

“Improving access to grocery stores in both urban and rural communities must be part of our national strategy to improve children’s health and prevent obesity and diabetes.  The Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative has demonstrated that supermarkets can thrive in food deserts and offers a strong model for solving this problem nationally.   Expanding this program is one of the Top Ten recommendations of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission To Build a Healthier America.”

The economic crisis has brought hunger and food access back into the national conversation. Food pantry shelves are picked bare. Milk and bread prices keep climbing. And millions of families across America are resorting to low-cost, low-nutrition food to make ends meet.

Thankfully, though, this renewed attention has also brought smart, pragmatic, and compassionate food policies and programs:

• • PolicyLink President Judith Bell presented ideas to increase healthy food access at a recent Center for American Progress policy panel. Click here for the full video and here to view Judith’s PowerPoint.
  • The federal stimulus package looks set to include a significant 13 percent boost in food stamps and more than $350 million for local shelters and food banks, emergency food assistance, and Meals on Wheels.
  • New York Governor David Paterson proposed a new supermarket development fund, modeled after a highly successful program in Pennsylvania.
  • The federal food desert study that PolicyLink and other advocates helped to get in last year’s Farm Bill is well underway. The study will look at the “challenges many Americans face in accessing healthy and affordably priced foods needed for a healthy diet.”
  • New Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack gave a promising interview to the Washington Post talking about the importance of healthy food in schools.

The health of millions of Americans will be tested throughout this economic crisis. It is all the more reason to fight for fair, just, and equitable food access for everyone.

Additional resources, conference info and news after the jump…

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In New York City, summer doesn’t officially start until we hear the sweet calliope music pumping from the scratchy speakers of a Mister Softee ice cream truck. Kids bounce out of brownstones and off of playgrounds to grab a chocolate-vanilla twist.

But upstate, they’re looking at a whole new paradigm. The Veggie Mobile is bringing locally grown, healthy and AFFORDABLE produce to the people of Albany. Run by Capital District Community Gardens, the Veggie Mobile looks to serve folks not served by full-service grocers. The results look promising:

When compared to New York Supermarket — a small grocery in the poor Arbor Hill neighborhood of Albany — the Veggie Mobile offered dramatic savings, more selection and fresher options. Bananas sold for $0.99 a pound at the supermarket, but went for $0.59 a pound from the Veggie Mobile. Iceberg lettuce was $1 each at the mobile grocery, and $1.99 at the New York Supermarket. Cucumbers sold for $0.89 each at the neighborhood market, but were 3 for $1 from the Veggie Mobile.

The difference means that poor families cannot only afford and access fresh produce, but can buy more than if they relied on the neighborhood options.

Instead of going to a big chain grocery store each week, where volume sales and competition mean lower prices, families in urban food deserts and rural communities tend to rely on gas station convenience stores, or corner stores where milk, bread and other staples cost more.

For more ideas on how to put an end to food deserts and increase access to healthy foods, check out the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place.